1929–1934: New Mexico / New York

Georgia returned to New Mexico, the place she called "the
faraway." She explored her surroundings, the mountains and deserts and
signs of settlement such as the ranches and the mission churches,
but she also spent time with Mabel Luhan’s husband, Tony, who was
of Navajo decent. He exposed her to different Navajo cultural practices,
such as dances, which gave Georgia an opportunity to witness the
performance of non-western spiritual customs.

The natural environment of New Mexico, with the colorful
landscape, strong light, and starkness of contrast, attracted O’Keeffe. Moreover,
her creativity and artistic drive were not hampered in the New
Mexican wilderness. She had room to explore and contemplate, both
the world around her and the connection she sought through her
artwork. Her independent exploration became more frequent and her
destinations more remote when she learned how to drive and purchased
a Model A Ford.

Among the many different subjects of O’Keeffe’s paintings
were large wooden crosses erected throughout the desert by a clandestine Catholic
sect. Indeed, the Catholic church clearly exerted great power over
the imagery of the New Mexican landscape. This power dominates
such paintings as Black Cross, New Mexico (1929).
In another treatment of images of death, Georgia studied and painted animal
bones left scattered throughout the desert, positioning these images
of past life and death in unusual ways and juxtapositions. Her
fascination with mission churches, with their curving adobe walls,
demonstrated her attraction to objects and places that had spiritual
meaning and were charged with the human emotion of faith. Looking
at the side of the Ranchos Church in Taos, Georgia created an interesting
abstraction, Ranchos Church (1930), that focuses
on the colors and the texture of the building without any representations
of life. Although many of the images Georgia chose to paint represented–at
least to some extent–the life that had long gone, her manner of
using colors and her distinctive techniques to achieve abstraction
and detachment infused the objects with life. Just as she had challenged
her students in Texas to see the beauty in their landscapes, she
saw beauty in lifeless objects and desolate landscapes.

Although O’Keeffe avoided providing interpretations of
her work, she made the desert come alive for many viewers, and
in turn the desert gave her ideas. In addition, her paintings are
not clearly part of one single artistic movement more specific
than the general movement of American modernism. Indeed, O’Keeffe’s
her styles and aims vary, from abstraction to symbolism, and she
apparently did not concern herself much with other’s interpretations
of her works: "O’Keeffe never made a firm distinction between representation
and abstraction the way other people did, and she always went back
and forth between the two approaches. What was objective to her
was sometimes nonobjective to others and vice versa, and she applied
nonobjective principles to realism, as Arthur Wesley Dow had taught"
(Lisle 278).

Georgia enjoyed her time in New Mexico, but still went
back to New York to be with Stieglitz every year. In 1932 she won
a competition to paint a mural for Radio City Music Hall, only
to find out that the ceiling could not support her canvases. Not
long after, she suffered from a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized
for two months, and later went to Bermuda to recover. Meanwhile,
Stieglitz felt guilty about O’Keeffe’s illness, as he had been
seeing Dorothy Norman, a young poet. In fact, Stieglitz had been
photographing Norman just as he had photographed O’Keeffe, in sensual
positions that suggested that the artist-model relationship extended
beyond the photograph. Stieglitz made frequent visits to Norman’s
home, and she helped him arrange a publication about his art. Both
had a high regard for the art of photography, and Norman proved
to be an excellent manager for the gallery, An American Place.
Stieglitz acted as Norman’s direct mentor, and her photography
reflected his tutelage. Unfortunately, Georgia was enraged upon
seeing that she had been replaced, and Stieglitz was unable to
give her the attention she needed to recover. After her trip to
Bermuda, she isolated herself at Lake George, eventually inviting
the writer Jean Toomer. Toomer had recently lost his wife and was
also recovering. Their partnership was of mutual benefit, and after
Toomer departed, O’Keeffe’s letters to him were affectionate and
warm. She was finally inspired to paint again.

Basically you get to pick a writer and you can communicate with them through an internal chat system which makes explaining how to do specific assignments a lot easier (especially if your teacher is a hard-ass like mine was.) Good luck with your paper!